Christmas on Baker Street
by Lynzee005
Summary: As the Christmas season approaches, Sherlock gets an idea...[Lots of friendship, hints of developing Sherlolly, but mostly fluffy and full of twinkles to hopefully make your holidays merry & bright! Happy Christmas, BBC Sherlock fans!] **COMPLETE**
1. Make My Wish Come True

Outside temperatures soared to summer-like heights for the fourth day in a row, while rare cloudless skies allowed the sun to beat down on the asphalt, kicking the mercury ever higher day after day as heat ricocheted up and down Baker Street in both directions. Of course, it had to be during a week of uncharacteristic October warmth that the hydronic heating system in the building should decide to go on the fritz, flooding each floor with unbearable mugginess on account. Opening the windows provided no respite during the day, and though the apartments could be cooled considerably at night, it never mattered much by mid-morning when the inside temperatures were suddenly on par with the outside. The stifling stillness of the air rendered the front parlour only marginally more habitable than the back bedroom.

Thus, Sherlock Holmes sat in his chair across from the television, a bag of frozen peas balanced on top of his head, the drapes drawn tight against the blaze of the midday sun. Two rotating fans blew tepid air across his skin, but didn't seem to provide much more relief than having the window open had done; beads of sweat stood up against the skin of his forearms, at the nape of his neck, and along his brow.

There was nothing for him to do. So he sat, patiently, waiting for the promise of rain and cooler weather to be delivered across the city, watching Christmas movies.

Sherlock's relationship with Christmas was a fraught one. As a child, the existence of a day in which he would be lavished with gifts for simply being present in the same room as certain members of his family was not without its charms, although he could have easily done without the yearly Christmas jumper knitted for him by his Nan. But he was not taken in entirely. In his first year at nursery school, he (correctly) deduced that Santa Claus was not a real person by comparing samples of his mother's handwriting with the gift tags on "Santa's" presents, and when—in an act of community service, he thought—he brought the proof to school to enlighten his classmates, his parents subsequently incurred the wrath of nearly two dozen angry sets of parents whose distraught children had come home in tears over the revelation.

For two years of his early adolescence, he outsourced his Christmas gift-buying to various neighbourhood children as a time-saving maneuver, although most of these "employees" were quite limited in the areas they could conceivably travel to so he was stuck giving gifts of boxed candy, cheap perfume, and checkout line paperback novels from the chemist's shop two blocks away.

And at the age of 17, his impassioned defence of the Grinch—who, he claimed, had a perfectly legitimate noise complaint against the citizens of Whoville and was somewhat within his rights to lay siege to their village—caused his beleaguered mother so much grief that she hid all of his presents and filled his stocking with coal before retreating to the back garden to chain smoke three cigarettes in what became the first and last time either he or Mycroft had ever seen her smoke.

He spent all of his university Christmas holidays at school after that.

Of course, he understood the draw of Christmas—the midwinter festivity, celebrating with light on the long dark nights, surrounded by people with whom you enjoyed spending time (because that stuff was important to neurotypicals.) There were always a handful of times every year when he wished he could, temporarily, suspend his rationality and give in to the season. But inevitably seeing the normally sane people he worked and socialized with completely lose their minds and dig themselves into end-of-calendar-year credit card debt for tacky gifts and tackier decor struck him as self-indulgent silliness on par with the belief in a miraculous virgin birth. It simply did not compute.

So on this blazing hot mid-autumn day, as he sat watching film after film, attempting to reproduce the chill of winter in the sauna that was currently his flat, he was surprised to feel a twinge of longing. Nostalgia and sentiment not being his forte, it was perhaps unsurprising that Sherlock did not long for the disappointing Christmases of his own past but for the idyllic Christmases of the collective consciousness; for yule logs and fir trees and mulled wine and carollers and even department store Santa Clauses. The kind of Christmas you'd find on 34th Street or in Bedford Falls or the Chicago belonging to the McAllisters and Griswolds.

This was the Christmas he suddenly decided he wanted to have.

In London, of all cities.

He was going to need a few things. Tradition dictated a certain amount of baking was required, as was the procurement of a festive meal consisting of some manner of poultry, a boiled root vegetable or two, and—for some reason—cranberries. There was the requisite Christmas card mailout—certainly the only time of year when the Royal Mail justified its continued existence, based solely on the number of cards his mother still posted at the beginning of December. What about Christmas music? The thought of Christmas gifts momentarily caused him a slight panic, but it was October and online shopping was a beautiful thing. Gifts would naturally mean he'd need a tree under which to put them. And, of course, recipients for the gifts. Which meant he'd need to drum up a guest list…  
>There was a lot of work to do. And he was definitely going to need some help…<p>

Downstairs, the plumbers had arrived. He could hear the clank of their tools and thudding work boots on the stairs to the basement.

Sherlock paid them no mind.

He had a party to plan.


	2. We All Want Some Figgy Pudding

Early November

"So," Sherlock said as he returned his magnifying glass to his pocket. "Christmas."

Detective Inspector Greg Lestrade looked up from his notebook. "What?"

Sherlock stepped around the head of the deceased woman on the ground between them and knelt to examine her fingernails. "Christmas," he repeated, as if peering under the fingernails of a dead woman were the perfect segue for the conversation he wanted to have.

Lestrade was unimpressed. "What about it?"

"It's coming up."

A sigh from the inspector drew Sherlock's eyes up from the woman's prone body. "Astute observation, Sherlock. Now can you apply that world-class investigative mind of yours to deducing literally _anything_ at all about the dead girl?"

Sherlock cast his eyes about the room—a drug den if ever he'd seen one, judging by the discarded needles and lighters and metal spoons littering the ground. A dead woman in a place such as this didn't raise too many questions, but Sherlock wasn't entirely sure that this was the simple case of a murdered prostitute or drug addict.

"You want me to solve this for you?"

Lestrade's exasperated sigh was answer enough. "That's the idea, generally."

"And then you'll talk to me about whatever I want to talk about?"

"Yes, I will talk to you about anything you want to talk about," Lestrade griped. "I will talk to you about fractal geometry or geopolitical power plays or Barbie dolls if that's what you want to talk about…"

Sherlock frowned. "Why would I want to talk about Barbie dolls?" he muttered before standing up to his full height. He flicked his index finger over the tip of his nose and took one more long, hard look at the room before speaking. "This woman was not killed here."

"How do you know?"

He pointed to the ground. "Drag marks under her feet. She was brought here from somewhere else."

"Another room?"

"Another part of town," he said. "She didn't frequent these neighbourhoods. Look at her hands. Expensive gel manicure. The Louboutin heels too. Dead giveaway." He paused, casting sheepish eyes at the Inspector. "Pardon the pun."

"How do you know that?" Lestrade gave the girl another once-over. "She's dressed like an extra from _Pretty Woman_."

Sherlock nodded. "She's posh for an east end drug den. She's not a drug user. She wouldn't come to a place like this. She was brought here by the person who killed her."

"And that would be…?"

"Well that's the easiest part of all," Sherlock pointed to the finger-like abrasions clearly seen around her neck. "Strangulation, from the front. Strangers don't usually strangle their victims—it takes too long, isn't easy to do. She knew her killer. The position of his hands indicates he was above her—that she was lying down and he was on top. The absence of defensive wounds suggests this was not an unwelcome event." He cleared his throat. "This woman was accidentally strangled to death during consensual sexual congress involving erotic strangulation. Her partner panicked, dressed her in appropriate street-walker attire, and brought her here to throw us off the scent." He nodded. "You're looking for a boyfriend, a lover, not a husband—she's unmarried—but definitely someone she knew and was intimate with, regularly."

Lestrade's eyes widened. "Right."

"Now…," Sherlock said. "About Christmas."

* * *

><p>Pushing their way out of the small cafe and into the newly-dampened street, Lestrade cleared his throat. "So what are you on about Christmas for?"<p>

Sherlock considered the other man. _Feed him a half-truth._"I'm conducting a highly unscientific poll."

"Highly unlikely."  
><em><br>Fine. Three-quarter truth._ "Maybe it's small talk."

Lestrade scoffed.

"What if I was actually searching for weaknesses that would allow me to manipulate the outcome of this year's Christmas gift exchange in which now I'm almost certainly not going to be invited to participate?"

Lestrade pointed a finger at Sherlock. "There you go! I'd believe that one."

Sherlock sighed. "Are you going to tell me or not?"

The inspector walked along the sidewalk, his heels striking the pavement just slightly out of sync with his longer-legged companions stride. The syncopated clip-clip-_clop_-clip-_clop_ echoed up off the stone buildings and asphalt that surrounded them, up to the open sky above their heads. It was starting to drizzle again. Sherlock turned his coat collar up even more and pulled his scarf around his throat, hugging the paper cup of coffee in his hands.

Finally, Lestrade sighed. "Favourite Christmas memory, yeah?" he sniffed. "Well, since I haven't had a decent Christmas in forever, I can say with certainty that Christmas dinner is the one thing I miss the most. Does that count?"

Sherlock narrowed his eyes. "Figgy pudding?"

"'Course."

"Pumpkin pie?"

"Not usually," he screwed up his face and wheeled on the detective. "No, really, why are you so curious about this again?"

Sherlock looked up at the sky above their heads, at the thick and heavy clouds that had seemed to settle against the rooftops. "Research," he replied.

"For a case?"

"Of sorts."

Lestrade seemed unconvinced. He took a sip of his coffee once again. "Bit old fashioned, this, asking questions and all that. Usually you'd just be able to look at me and know what I liked about Christmas dinner—"

The detective bristled at the challenge. He rolled his shoulders slightly and looked the inspector up and down. "I already knew Christmas dinner was your favourite because you I know have self-control issues. Your smoking habit bears that out, as does the fact that during the last Christmas you spent with your wife, you came back from your holiday having gained five and a half pounds. And how does one gain weight over the holidays? Eating. Christmas. Dinner." Sherlock paused to breathe before continuing. "Of course, perhaps you gorge yourself on vegetables, but in the run-up to the holidays every year since you've taken to suffering through salads for lunch—and I do mean suffering, judging by the look on your face as you eat it—so I doubt you willingly consume enough veggies to account for the weight gain alone. You also don't have a sweet tooth, so pastries and baked goods are probably not high enough on the list of offenders to count. I _must _therefore conclude that your holiday overindulgence comes in the form of meat—my guess is turkey—and potatoes—definitely mashed." He paused and took a drink from his own coffee cup.

Lestrade blinked. "Is that all?"

"Hardly," Sherlock replied. "Figgy pudding and not pumpkin pie suggests tradition is important to you. _English_ traditions. Borne out in your choice of traditional _English_ Christmas foods, not American ones. Thus, I surmise that the holidays are rather difficult, being separated from your wife, because you must miss the traditions you were building with her, with her family…"

He observed that Lestrade had grown quite quiet. For a startling moment, Sherlock feared he may have run his mouth and taken his analysis a step too far. He didn't even know why he'd said what he'd said in the first place; it was wholly irrelevant to the topic at hand. He turned to his friend, softening his voice. "Have I offended?"

Lestrade ignored the question, and for his part turned his face heavenward for a brief second as the light shower misted on. "I'll bet your deductions couldn't tell you about the year we decided to do a ham instead of a turkey," he said with a laugh. "That was the first Christmas after we got married."

Sherlock knew better than to interrupt. He may not have been the world's most socially adept human being, but in all the years he'd spent around people with normally functioning emotional centres stored within their limbic systems he had learned a thing or two about when to talk and when to stay silent. In this case, he wisely chose the latter.

"We'd just moved to this great flat," Lestrade continued. "Nearly twice the size of our first place. It was positively palatial. So we offered to host Christmas dinner. And it was an absolute disaster."

"How?"

Lestrade chuckled. "Well, we forgot to cook the ham. We'd made sweet potatoes and a bean casserole and had a lovely dessert baking away. Then her parents arrive, and then her brother and his wife. And suddenly we remembered that the ham roast was still sitting in the freezer." Lestrade continued to laugh. "We'd never had a freezer before, you see. We bought the ham a month earlier and chucked it in there and them promptly forgot we even had it. Out of sight, out of mind, I guess."

"What did you do?"

His laughter had ebbed a bit but still his shoulders shook. "We boiled it to within an inch of its life and served it with some kind of cranberry sauce reduction her brother made in lieu of roasting it the way we'd planned—you know, cloves and all that. Dinner was two hours late and we missed the church service we'd planned on going to, and it all tasted fine, but…"

Sherlock frowned. "Actually sounds like you emerged relatively unscathed."

"Well we never lived it down, that's for sure," he smiled. "And we certainly never cooked another ham, and very nearly turfed the deep freeze just in case anything else got lost in there."

Sherlock watched as Lestrade's face morphed from joyful to sad again as the remembrance passed. The fact of it made Sherlock more than a little bit sad himself. He clutched his coffee cup and took a long pull from within.

"'Course not every Christmas dinner was a disaster," Lestrade continued. "My mum was a great cook, and her mum before her. Always cooking something for someone. Christmas was just an absolute feast. They'd cook enough to feed whole armies but it was just us, a dozen people or so. So we'd have food for days afterwards, just coming out of our ears. Turkey and potatoes, and someone would boil down the bones and make soup and that would get us through till well after the New Year."

The conversation percolated in Sherlock's mind. He felt himself drifting away, not paying attention. "Meal times as a cultural touchstone," he muttered as Lestrade trailed off.

"Hm?"

"Oh," Sherlock shook his head. "Nothing. Carry on."

Lestrade fell silent for a while. "You were right though," he said. "About missing the traditions. After mum passed, and dad was already gone…things just dropped off. My aunts and uncles and cousins had their own families, and of course they always invite me 'round during the holidays—still do—but you feel like such a burden. You're the one with the divorce pending and no one to go home to at the end of the day," he paused. "Though I suppose it's no more depressing than hanging around the pub on Christmas Day. I didn't even know there were pubs open on Christmas Day until the year after she left me…" he said, shrugging into his jacket. "I don't know why I'm telling you all this."

Sherlock felt the weight of Lestrade's confession, and he didn't know what to say in return. If anything. He really wished there were classes on social convention he could take…

Then Lestrade chuckled. "D'you remember Christmas crackers?"

Sherlock was taken aback. "Crackers?"

Lestrade pinched his coffee cup in his teeth and made a gesture with both hands. "You know, yay big, foil tube, stupid hat inside?" he said against the paper rim.

Sherlock scoured his brain until he hit on it. He frowned. "Yeah, more or less."

The inspector grinned and grabbed his cup from his mouth. "It's not Christmas dinner without Christmas crackers…"

Sherlock made a mental note about that one.

"So, does that answer your question?" Lestrade asked, rounding the car.

"Yes, thanks."

"Do you want a lift home?"

"Er, no," Sherlock shook his head. "I've got…errands."

Lestrade nodded. "Okay. Thanks for the coffee." He opened the door and was about to duck in when he stood up to his full height, resting his arm on the roof of the car. "What's your favourite thing about Christmas?"

Sherlock paused, slightly shocked by the reversal of the interrogation. "Ah…same," he lied. "Dinner. Christmas dinner."

"Yeah," he said. "Christmas dinners. All of them. That's what I remember best."

He nodded at Sherlock and climbed into the car, and within a moment was pulling away from the curb and down the street.

Sherlock watched as he departed, sipping his coffee in the misting rainfall. Try as he might, he still couldn't hit on a favourite Christmas memory of his own.

But he didn't have time to worry about it; ideas were brewing.

He finished his coffee and made his way to the Limehouse station, not caring about the rain anymore.

* * *

><p><strong>**AN:** _There has been some question about whether or not turkey is a traditional English food or not. Turkeys *are* native to the Americas but were brought to Europe by the end of the 16th century, and by the time Queen Victoria took the throne, they were rapidly becoming the preferred centrepiece for the Christmas meal. From a BBC site about Victorian Christmas traditions [www . bbc . co . uk / victorianchristmas / history . shtml]: "The roast turkey also has its beginnings in Victorian Britain. Previously other forms of roasted meat such as beef and goose were the centrepiece of the Christmas dinner. The turkey was added to this by the more wealthy sections of the community in the 19th century, but its perfect size for a middle class family gathering meant it became the dominant dish by the beginning of the 20th century." American and Canadian Christmas traditions borrowed heavily from England, especially the Victorians, which explains why turkeys are found on our tables to this day!_******


	3. In Winter It's a Marshmallow World

Mid-November

"Mrs. Hudson?" Sherlock called out as he tipped around the bannister at the bottom of the stairs and turned towards her kitchen.

"In here, Sherlock," she called, peeking around the corner and gasping at the sight that befell her. "My goodness! What happened to you?"

"Hm?" Sherlock looked down at the state of his clothes—a casual but rumpled button-down and grey sweatpants, leftover from his undercover stint two months earlier—and felt the roughness of three days of stubble on his chin with his hand. He sagged a bit. An abysmal lack of cases that week had made it difficult for him to even conjure up the wherewithal to leave his bedroom. It wasn't depression—not in the clinical sense—but whatever it was, it rendered him entirely unable to recall if he'd showered that morning. Just to be sure, he smelled his shirt, and nothing offensive forced him to recoil. Still, he must have looked frightful.

_Note to self: check mirror before going into public._

"Slow week," he muttered, eager to change the subject. "Can you teach me how to bake?"

Mrs. Hudson paused, briefly, before letting out a loud peal of laughter. "You? Want to learn how to bake?"

"Well, I already know _how_ to bake—generally speaking…"

"You," she stated, her voice flat. "The one who keeps eyeballs in the egg tray and severed fingertips where the butter ought to go?"

He thought about it. "Where else would I keep them?"

Mrs. Hudson wiped her eyes and stepped into the hallway. "Just tell me what you want and I'd be happy to make it for you," she patted his hand. "I don't think your damage deposit will cover the repairs I'll need to make after the inevitable fire you'd start if you were in charge of _actually_ doing the baking yourself…"

Sherlock pulled his hand away. "Mrs. Hudson, that is spectacularly unfair. How do you know I'm not a good baker?"

She levelled her eyes at him. "Sherlock…"

He sighed and tried another tack: the appeal to her authority. He lifted his voice up half an octave and coated it with honey. "I'm specifically looking for a…better selection of treats for the Christmas season. And I thought: who better to go to than my gracious landlady?"

She rolled her eyes. "Laying it on a bit thick there, aren't you?" she said, grabbing a fresh set of dish towels from the linen closet.

Sherlock stood to his full, arrogant and indignant height. "Fine. I'll just trawl the Internet then. What do you think? Perhaps Jamie Oliver has a good shortbread recipe?"

Mrs. Hudson set the towels down on the counter and whirled on him. "I highly doubt it!"

Sherlock hid his triumphant grin with masterful aplomb, but as Mrs. Hudson grabbed her autumn jacket from the back of the door with one hand and his hand with the other, he didn't bother hiding his look of confusion.

"We're going shopping."

Sherlock's eyes widened as he felt himself being dragged towards the door of the flat. _This was not part of the plan__…_he thought. But before he could even open his mouth to speak, he was being spirited down Baker Street towards the nearest Tesco.

* * *

><p>Mrs. Hudson stood over the sink in her kitchen, washing her hands of the remnants of cookie dough. She had a streak of flour on the apple of her cheek and a fine dusting of it at her right temple; her hair, carefully pinned back at the start of the exercise—had begun to fall loose around her face as the kitchen warmed up with the oven on. Three hours had elapsed since Sherlock had first come down the stairs, and two since they had come home from the shop and started baking. He had watched—and taken excellent mental notes—while she made bread pudding, batches of mincemeat tarts and gingerbread men, and more than two dozen melt-in-your-mouth shortbread cookies. All, she said, required baking for the Christmas season.<p>

Sherlock _did_ understand the general idea behind baking. Recipes were not rocket science after all; he didn't think there was much to it as long as you followed the directions. But watching Mrs. Hudson measure ingredients in a process she referred to as "eyeballing it" made him suddenly nervous about the whole endeavour.

"…but you see, my mother taught me to bake, just as her mother had taught her before that, and so on and so on down the line. So this is all very much inborn. I don't keep cookbooks," she tapped her temple with the tip of her index finger. "It's all up here."

"A mind palace for recipes," Sherlock nodded. "Not perhaps the most efficient or useful way to utilize the method of loci but—"

Mrs. Hudson was confused, momentarily, before choosing her battles and deciding to ignore that one. "Didn't your mother bake when you were young?"

Sherlock narrowed his eyes. "I do have a vague recollection of an embarrassing incident involving a school bake sale and semi-sweet chocolate chips...," he said, clearing his throat. "I believe I was nine."

"Oh, that's…too bad," Mrs. Hudson cooed. "School bake sales...now that's something I haven't thought of in a long time..."

Sherlock noticed that her voice had taken on the thick timbre of nostalgia, and he wondered, briefly, if the holiday season conjured up within her a kind of regret over the life choices that had led her to where she was now—widowed (with his help, of course), childless (by choice), landlady to a the world's only consulting detective who—admittedly—always delivered his rent cheques in full and on time but who could be a world-class twit at the best of times (Sherlock held no fantastical delusions about his behaviour; he knew his shortcomings all too well.) Watching her as she swept drying crumbs of cookie dough and granulated sugar from the countertops, he realized how deeply sad it was that she should be living out her golden years alone.

Before he had a chance to act on his presuppositions, the oven timer sounded and she busied herself removing the last batch of cookies. The whole kitchen smelled of caramelized sugar, and Sherlock briefly remembered that he hadn't eaten yet.

"Tea?" Mrs. Hudson asked as she put the kettle on to boil.

"Yes, thank you," he replied.

"So why the sudden interest in baking?"

"Research," he told her. "Tell me, why is Christmas baking such a venerable exercise?"

"Well, I suppose I already told you that—tradition, really."

"Tradition…" he murmured. "Is that all?"

"Is that all? Traditions are everything! Traditions make us who we are. Traditions inform where we ought to be going." She rolled her eyes. "Is that all…really!" She wrung her hands on her apron, staring off at the wallpaper behind his head as a lazy grin spread its way across her face. "Baking...it's like a little ritual. Whether you know the recipe or not, there's so much that goes into it. Selecting the right recipe of course comes first. Then you shop. I was never one for shopping, you know, even when I lived in America—the land of shopping malls!—but when it comes to getting groceries, I could do that all day every day, and you'd never see a happier person than I." She sighed, her fingers twirling in the air. "You go 'round and 'round the aisles, picking up your ingredients, just like we did. Everything is always so neatly wrapped and fresh, tightly sealed, solid little packages, and you fit it all in your basket, like bricklaying or something. Tetris maybe?" she sighed. "There's nothing quite like standing in the baking aisle surveying your choices—toasted coconut or untoasted? Pecans or walnuts? Crushed or chopped? What kind of flour? How much sugar?"

"These are…difficult decisions?"

She looked at him, aghast, before chuckling to herself. "Well of course they are, Sherlock. Imagine using peanuts instead of walnuts when you make brownies?" The idea was inexplicably abhorrent to her. "Totally changes the recipe."

He didn't understand, but he nodded anyway. "…Naturally."

She sighed again. "This is all just the beginning, you see. You pay for everything and get it all home, and you lay everything out and measure and pour until you get the perfect mix. It's a real challenge to get each cookie or each tart to be _just so_ before you put it in the oven, and getting them to bake without burning or being uncooked in the middle is more than just a _skill_, it's an _art_. But once you get it all together, put it in the oven…you wait—make a cup of tea, do a bit of washing up. And there's this sense of pride, of course, but also anticipation. You could make the same cookies every day for ten years and have a different cookie every time depending on the temperature of the water or the type of egg you use or even the weather. Not unlike your little experiments, except of course that you shouldn't eat whatever it is you keep in those beakers..." she grimaced as the mental image coursed through her, and then she shook her head. "Well, nevertheless, the oven chime goes…" she wagged her finger at Sherlock, "…but you still can't eat them. You have to wait until they cool, or until your friends arrive. Preferably the latter, because Christmas baking is always best shared with friends…"

Sherlock nodded. "…Christmas baking is always best shared with friends," he muttered. "How very appropriate."

"Is it?" she asked.

"Is that a fact or just your opinion, as someone for whom Christmas baking is the highlight of the season?"

She cocked her head sideways. "How did you know that?" she scowled. "You're doing that thing again, aren't you? _Reading_ me?"

He shook his head. "You must have told me," he lied, knowing perfectly well that it was the contents of her pantry and the existence of several metal Christmas-themed tins on the top shelf of the hallway linen closet that informed him that Christmas baking was a central facet of her wintertime calendar. But he _could_ have figured it out from the way she'd lovingly formed the pie crusts on the tarts, or the way she'd obsessively spooned filing into each cup, or how she'd laughed and gently reformed the tiny dollops of shortbread that Sherlock himself had attempted. It was blindingly obvious. Couldn't she see that herself?

"Yes, well…," she sighed once again. "So few thrills in an old woman's life. We all turn to baking eventually. Usually for grandchildren, you know…" The kettle behind her began to wail, and she spun around to fix their tea.

Sherlock did, very much, want to sit and process the findings of the day. But something told him that would be a misstep. He carefully folded up the file marked "Christmas Baking" and returned it to the drawer in his mind where it belonged, before he crossed the kitchen and took over her task without so much as a word in her direction. She had set out the china; he lifted it onto the tray, and poured the tea into the pot, and put the little dish of sugar next to the milk. She turned to him, and he stopped shortly, taking the moment to smile run his thumb along the flour smearing the soft skin of her cheek, cleaning the smudge away as he did so.

"Thank you, dear," she said.

"Are you sad, Mrs. Hudson?"

She pursed her lips and smiled, shaking her head. "Why should I be sad?" she asked, before sighing. "Oh, Sherlock, don't take everything I say so seriously. I've got everything I could ever want right here—a home that I own in a prime London location, a warm kitchen, friends to share it with...and a lodger who keeps me on my toes," she winked at him. "I'm the happiest woman in the Realm."

He should have felt placated by her words, but part of him wondered—seriously wondered—if they were as true as she made them out to be. He hooked a closed half-smile around his eye teeth.

"I suppose you'll be wanting to take this in your parlour?"

"If it's all the same to you, Mrs. Hudson, might I stay for a little longer?"

The smile that crossed her face did something to Sherlock's stomach, something not wholly enjoyable but not entirely unpleasant either; a warmth there that seemed to rise from his navel and spread throughout his chest and up into his cheeks. He regarded the joy in her eyes and felt the sudden, inexplicable urge to call his mother.

"Of course, dear," she smiled at him.

"Why don't you sit down?" he said, following behind with the tray. "This has been a highly informative and very enjoyable afternoon."

"I'm glad to hear it," she said.

"Perhaps tomorrow you can teach me how to roast a turkey," he said, adding as an afterthought: "Or a maybe ham."

Mrs. Hudson practically fell into her chair. "Oh?"

He nodded. "One lump or two?"


	4. Stay Bravely Green in Wintertime

Late November

The moment the cab pulled up, Sherlock was already waiting curbside. He stood against the wrought iron fence, watching her pay the cab fare, adjusting his scarf as she handed over the bills and waiting for her to notice that he was there. When her head finally popped up over the top roof of the car, she let out a startled gasp.

"How long have you been standing there?"

He nodded at her wallet. "Long enough to see that you're going to need to stop at a bank to get more cash for the cab ride home."

She narrowed her eyes at him in suspicion as she rounded the back of the cab, adjusting her gloves on her hands. "I'm dying to know what was so urgent that you made me drop everything and come over straight away."

"I need help."

Suspicion turned into concern. Her eyes widened and she took two generous steps towards him on the sidewalk. _How very Mary of her_, Sherlock thought with an inward smile.

Mary rested a hand on his arm. "Is everything all right?"

He nodded. "Yes, fine—"

"Are you sure? Is it Mrs. Hudson? Did something happen—?"

"I have to buy some gifts," he cut her off. "And I've never been very good at it…"

Concern became surprise; she lifted an eyebrow. "Gifts?"

"Christmas gifts," he said, adding: "And probably something with which to wrap them."

"Christmas gifts?"

Sherlock sighed and cocked his head. "Let's go for a walk, shall we?"

Mary considered. "Christmas gifts?"

He nodded. "All right," she said, gaining his side as they started off to the south.

They walked in silence along the chilled and damp street. The whirr of traffic speeding along towards the very heart of the city—from motorbikes to black cabs to the four back-to-back Routemasters that had somehow managed to get convoyed together at some point—made it difficult to converse. At first it was nice. Awkward small talk with the semi-estranged wife of his best friend was a terrible distance outside of Sherlock's comfort zone, and he was glad for the distraction the streetscape provided. The drizzle that surrounded them made unwanted, sunshine-y eye contact with strangers a non-issue, although keeping one's head up was, as always, _de rigueur_on account of all the umbrellas that were making their steel-ribbed appearances at Sherlock's eye level. They seemed to pass the time companionably, and only twice did he react with visceral anxiety as Mary opened her mouth as if to speak.

They'd made it across Marylebone Road and all the way to the Starbucks where Baker intersected with Porter/Bickenhall before Sherlock began to feel awkward about the whole not talking thing, however. He watched her out of the corner of his eye as she passed by the coffee shop's window display, already advertising Christmas mugs and pre-packaged exclusive roasts as stocking stuffers. He cleared his throat and, in the reflection of the glass, Mary glanced at him expectantly.

"Should I have told you in advance that we would be walking?"

Mary shook her head and stood up, fixing her hair in the window. "Life's an adventure. Or at least it is when your husband's best friend calls you out of the blue and practically begs you to come over." She chuckled, tugging on the ends of the pale blue scarf knotted at the base of her throat before tucking it into the lapel of her raincoat. She pointed down at her shoes. "At least I wore proper footwear."

"How is John?" Sherlock blurted before grimacing inwardly as he demonstrated to himself just how unsuited he was for gentle company in public.

Mary's mood shifted imperceptibly, though of course Sherlock noticed the newfound stiffness in her shoulders, the clipped stride as she stepped back from the coffee shop window, the tightness at the corners of her mouth. "He's good," she replied finally. "'Course he's still not speaking to me. But he takes us to our appointments and to all the pre-natal classes." She paused. "He's very involved. He just can't stand to be in the same room as me."

Sherlock kept his eyes focused on the street ahead of him. "I'm sorry to hear that."

"Don't be," she said quickly. "Still a better marriage than most, I would imagine. Besides, I suppose I had it coming."

Sherlock wanted to disagree, but what little he understood of interpersonal romantic relationships told him that keeping lies from one's spouse was a fairly significant _faux pas_; he imagined that was even more true when the secret you kept involved your past life as a globetrotting assassin, or when as part of a hastily-executed coverup intended to keep that identity a secret for the foreseeable future, you shoot your husband's best friend in the shoulder.

But he could bear no ill will towards Mary; the thought had never even crossed his mind. She was a good woman. The vibrancy of her laugh alone more than made up for whatever stood behind the locked doors of her past. _We all have our burdens to bear, _he thought to himself. If there was one thing he'd learned from the kindness of the people

"So, Christmas gifts?"

"Yes," Sherlock replied as they continued walking. "Like I said, I never was very good at this sort of thing, and—"

"Did you get roped into Greg's gift exchange down at the Yard?" she asked. "Is there a consulting detective Christmas gala you were invited to?"

"Don't be ridiculous," he stated, confused. "I'm the world's only consulting detective. What kind of gala would that be?"

She stifled a chuckle. "Absolutely right."

"And I've been banned from all Scotland Yard party functions ever since the 2009 Christmas party..." Sherlock cleared his throat. "Though, really, it wasn't _my_ fault Santa was drunk and getting handsy with the female constabulary." He wavered. "Though _p__erhaps_ I could have chosen a better place to confront him about it than right in front of the children. And I crossed a line when I removed his beard. I admit that..."

Mary couldn't hold in her laugh any longer. "Well, I just assumed that silly things like Christmas gift giving would be…not something you would indulge in."

Sherlock considered her words. "Any other year, it probably wouldn't be. But this year it's…different."

"Oh," she said after a thoughtful moment. "So why do you need _my _help?"

"You do think that Christmas gifts are the best part of the season, don't you?"

Mary shot him a look, an embarrassed flush of red spreading across her face. "Where did you—?"

He furrowed his brow. "I know you haven't exactly been the most truthful about your past, but...of all the stories you've told in your life, growing up in the orphanage is the one that's most true, isn't it?"

Mary looked straight ahead as she nodded. "Well—"

"I imagine there aren't a lot of opportunities to develop deep and lasting friendships or traditions when you're shuffling from orphanage to foster home to orphanage again, is there?"

"Not really."

"But there was always a tree…"

Mary allowed herself a small smile. "How did you know?"

"I think even the most dour of Dickensian orphanages must still put up a tree at Christmas," he replied.

"Well the orphanage where I grew up was far from Dickensian. But you're right: a tree every year." Her smile spread. "The nuns—" she puffed out her chest and cheeks, "—these strapping Bavarian Catholic nuns—would make such a big deal out of picking the nicest looking tree from wherever it was they were looking. Usually they'd just chop it down themselves from the forests surrounding the town, and they'd take two of the older girls with them to help haul it back. A very big honour if you were chosen. The middle girls would help set it up in the reading room at the orphanage, just off the nursery, so the littlest ones could see it at night from their beds." Mary was wistful. "We'd all get a chance to throw some tinsel on it—our contribution to the decorations."

She chewed on her lower lip for a moment before stopping to admire another window display, this time at a shoe store. "We got one present every year," she said finally. "But it meant the world to us. Something small, wrapped with a little bow beneath that tree—meant the world to kids like us. The little ones always got books. I liked to help with that part, picking out the books and deciding who got what. Girls who'd just had their First Communion got a necklace, a crucifix usually. When you hit fifteen or sixteen the nuns had the good sense to let us pick out our own gifts at the _Weihnachtsmarkt _in town, with a handful of marks—maybe equivalent to a pound or two—and we'd all go because, yeah, free money but also because it was a great opportunity to meet boys." She giggled and sighed, lost in her own memories. "Ah, but it was always nice to receive something. I know that's maybe not the PC thing to say these days, but gifts made us feel…special. Like someone out there took the time to know us and selected something just for us." She shrugged. "It was such a nice tradition. The only one I ever knew for so many years—waking up Christmas morning to _P__feffernüsse_ and _S__pekulatius _and coffee if you were old enough, and diving into a mound of presents, sometimes up to fifty girls all shrieking and ripping open their gifts. I still get a shiver when I see silver paper and purple bows, because that's what they used, every year, to wrap them."

Mary smiled at Sherlock, who cleared his throat nervously. "There was a time when I used to pay one of the younger children of a neighbour to buy my Christmas presents for my family."

"Shut up!" Mary gasped, linking her arm through Sherlock's as she laughed. Her amusement brightened her face considerably, and he hid a half-smile as she continued. "Good god, Sherlock!"

As they strolled arm in arm towards Marylebone High Street, Sherlock grew thoughtful. Mary began to rattle off her gift-buying rules, but Sherlock was barely paying attention.

"Have you got a list of who you need to buy for?"

"Hm?" he side-eyed her narrowly "Yes, in my head. Are you fishing to see if I'm going to buy you something?"

"Well are you?"

"You _did_ fire a bullet into my shoulder not too long ago," Sherlock returned, catching concerned glances from the shoppers lining the busy street. He smiled sheepishly and Mary overemphasized the shrug of her shoulders as she brushed him off. When they'd passed a safe distance and were out of earshot of the unintended recipients of Sherlock's declaration, Mary laughed.

"And you very nearly destroyed my marriage not long after _that_."

"Well, all things being equal, I'm still not telling you."

"Than I'm glad I shot you."

Sherlock grinned and Mary continued to laugh.

"Ah, well. Can't blame a girl for trying. Now…you have a list. I presume you have a budget as well. Best advice I can give you then is just consider the person you're buying for. I'm sure you have no problem with that task, what with all your fancy _deductions _and all…" she trailed off. "What are their interests? Do they have any hobbies? Have they mentioned anything in particular that they want? Something you know they wouldn't buy for themselves?"

Sherlock nodded, taking mental notes as Mary forged ahead. "There's always someone on your list who seems to have everything, or at least doesn't _want_ anything, and they're the hardest to buy for, for obvious reasons. For those people, I like buying experiences—gift cards to nice restaurants or theatre venues or the zoo…stuff like that."

"Seems like a lot of work."

"Well in the end I promise you it's worth it," she smiled. "When you see them tear into the package and their eyes light up…"

Sherlock nodded, a sly smile on his lips. "If you say so…"

In the end Sherlock and Mary walked up one side of the High Street and started down the other, but it became clear that all he would be purchasing would be four rolls of wrapping paper, a package of ribbons and bows, and a box of ten hand cut Christmas cards that cost a small fortune Sherlock wasn't entirely sure was deserved. He'd debated returning them, but Mary's feet had begun to swell, the length of their walk and the time they'd been gone having taken a toll despite the fact that she wore sensible shoes. Sherlock dutifully hailed a cab the moment her confident stride became laboured, and they rode home, their small haul resting between them on the bench seat in the back.

As they pulled up to 221B Baker Street, Mary let out a groan. "Bollocks! I forgot—"

Sherlock held up a hand to silence her and pulled out his own wallet. He handed a fold of bills to the driver. "This should more than cover the final fare."

After confirming her address, the driver nodded. Mary sat back, stunned.

"You really needn't—"

"How else will you get home?"

She leaned over and quickly kissed his cheek. Sherlock was himself quite stunned by the sudden display of affection.

"I had a very nice day, Sherlock."

He searched for his voice. "As did I," he stammered softly, fiddling with his scarf before coughing into his fist and adopting sternness once again. "You'll probably want to stay off your feet for a little while…"

Mary rolled her eyes. "No kidding."

He stepped out of the car, and just before shutting the door, he turned once again to face her. "John will come around. I'm sure of it."

Mary once again stiffened at his name. Lips set firmly, she nodded. "I hope you're right."

He bowed his head to her and shut the cab door, then watched as the car rolled away down the street.

In the upstairs front parlour of 221B, Sherlock deposited the wrapping paper and bows and surveyed the mess of boxes strewn about the room—Christmas presents, all. He'd been finished his shopping for a week already. He didn't feel too badly about lying to Mary about the purpose of their outing; it had been a helpful exercise to hear the very rules he had given himself reiterated back to him by the one person John had, once upon a time, declared was the very best gift-giver in England.

Sherlock did worry about the state of her feet, though…

He spent the rest of the afternoon and part of the evening wrapping the boxes he'd already filled, one for each of them. He folded and creased and taped everything until he had a pile of perfectly wrapped parcels, each one tied with a ribbon and topped with a bow, exactly like the ones in the YouTube videos he'd watched obsessively the day before for practice.

By the time the sun sank over the horizon, Sherlock had a pile of neatly stacked gifts perched on the middle of his desk. He looked around the room for a good place to store them, and upon finding nothing appropriate, Sherlock began to wonder how early was _too early_ to secure a Christmas tree…


	5. His Heart Was Full of Love, Love, Love

Early December

"_Oh the weather outside is frightful__…_"

Sherlock closed his eyes and sighed, redoubling his efforts to focus on the pair of tweezers pincer-grasped in his hand.

"…_But the fiiiiire is sooooo delightful__…_"

He carefully slid one prong of the tweezers underneath the caked and muddy footprint on the windowsill, lifting the thin slice ever-so-slightly, leaving it ready to be pulled away.

"…_And since we__'__ve no place to goooo__…_"

He steadied his hand, holding his breath as he applied the tiniest amount of pressure to the tweezers, closing them around tiny section of the print.

"_LET IT SNOW, LET IT SNOW, LET IT SNOW!_"

The sonic shock caused Sherlock's hand to jerk into the windowsill and the freed footprint fragment, plus a sizeable chunk of the window frame itself, went sailing to the floor in front of the baseboard radiator. He dropped the tweezers from his grasp and sighed, scrubbing a hand through his hair.

"Is that all out of your system?" Sherlock drawled. "Are you feeling better now?"

"It's the first week of December and Christmas is twenty-two sleeps away. I'm gonna be like this all month, mate."

Sherlock straightened up and retrieved his tweezers from where he'd dropped them. "I know you're preparing for fatherhood, but really—counting down to Christmas by number of sleeps?"

John mock-frowned as he pulled off his rubber gloves. "_You__'__re a mean one, Mr. Grinch__…_" Then the doctor laughed and continued with his attempt at lifting prints from the computer keyboard on the desk against the far wall.

Sherlock turned back to the windowsill and the remnants of the boot print. He could attempt to retrieve another sample, but he knew what Molly's analysis at the lab would find—clay and iron dust, which could be clearly seen without the aid of a microscope—and he was confident he already knew which of the riverside construction sites the man who'd broken into the bank had frequented in the hours leading up to the burglary. He tossed the tweezers back into his pocket. "You can let Dimmock back in," he called out into the stairwell as he packed away what few things he'd pulled out when they'd first arrived.

"Solved it then?"

"Yep," Sherlock said, letting the 'p' _pop _against his lips as he spoke.

"Gonna fill me in?"

"Do you still enjoy the same Christmas carols as you always have?"

John shrugged, but his answer seemed to suggest he thought the question a silly one with a foregone answer. "Favourite's are favourites, Sherlock. It doesn't change day to day."

"No, I suppose not," Sherlock nodded. "Let me see, what _were _your favourites? 'Let it Snow' obviously…"

"Classic."

Sherlock strode around the empty banker's office, ignoring the deductions he was still making about the burglary and focusing instead on John. _Rumpled shirt__…__bags under his eyes__…__slept in front of the telly or his computer again. Spots on his forehead__—__eating at the chippy more often than at home. Desperate need of a haircut. Same trousers three days running. Probably out of laundry soap__—__curry stain on his right knee from lunch yesterday._

"Sherlock?"

The consulting detective looked up at John. "'The Christmas Song.' Dave Matthews Band. On fairly regular rotation each Christmas during our brief stint as roommates. Especially at two in the morning if I recall. A reminder of your university girlfriend…"

John sighed. "Great song…and what a girl…" he paused. "Hang on, it took you all that time studying me to figure that out?"

"Hm?" Sherlock snapped to attention, "Oh. No. I was trying to figure out exactly how long its been since Mary left to stay with friends."

John's eyes widened.

Sherlock made a slight waving gesture with his hand. "Judging from the state of your clothes, I'd venture a guess at five days?"

John's eyes widened. "Six."

"You should really forgive her already," Sherlock admonished.

"She lied," John said. "And she shot you."

"John…"

The doctor sighed. "I'm working on it."

Sherlock took another breath, changing the subject back. "There was another song you liked. Full of obscenities…"

John shucked a snort between them. "The Pogues. 'Fairytale of New York.' Brilliant song."

Sherlock half-smiled. "It's more fun than most, I'll grant you."

"It's brilliant," John pointed a finger at him. "Don't you speak ill of The Pogues."

Amused, Sherlock's eyes crinkled. He and John started out into the bullpen beyond the office doors as DI Dimmock and his team marched back in, after being unceremoniously kicked out only ten minutes earlier.

Dimmock seethed. "Find anything useful?"

"Inside job," Sherlock announced. He spun to face the Inspector as he continued to walk, backwards, toward the lobby. "Here's a hint: check everyone's shoes. There's a muddy boot print on the windowsill. My guess is it'll match up with one of the employees sitting in this room right now."

He looked around and saw two dozen sets of eyes staring back at him, and wondered if perhaps he should have put more distance between himself and a potential bank robber before saying what he'd said. But he hadn't, and this was the situation. He managed a smile.

"Happy Christmas," he said with a wave as he turned once again and John pushed out into the lobby, holding the door for Sherlock. Behind them, Dimmock's orders to seal the doors was met with a flurry of movement, while the chattering din from the workers rumbled out towards the lifts, nearly drowning out John's quiet chuckle.

"That was bloody stupid," he said. "Suppose the perp decided to make a break for it and used you as a human shield? Or _me_?"

"Not likely," Sherlock said, pushing the call button for the lift. "The boot print was small but belonged to a man—a heavy boot, a workboot—which suggests someone of small stature. Definitely below average, a slight man. You're of average height and build and I'm considerably taller—"

"I wouldn't go that far…"

"…So it's safe to say that he would be no match for either of us—you with your army training and me with my extensive knowledge of various Japanese martial arts."

"Right," John nodded. "So you're not going to help Dimmock sew this one up then?"

"If it were Lestrade, I would. But it's too simple. Even _he_ can't screw this one up."

The elevator stopped and the doors swung open, and as he stepped inside John shook his head in amusement. "No wonder Dimmock hates you."

"He doesn't hate me," Sherlock replied. "He…all right, yes, he _does_ hate me."

Another laugh from John. "Yes, he does."

They rode the lift down in silence for a few seconds before their conversation picked up once more. "I spent a Christmas in New York once," John said. "Quite nice actually."

_New York? Quite the segue, John__…_Sherlock thought until he remembered where their previous conversation had begun and ended—with Christmas carols and a scant reference to New York from one of John's favourite seasonal songs. "I don't like New York," Sherlock said with a sneer. "In the summer it's too hot, and in the winter everything is bleak, and autumn and spring are just slight variants on the seasons that surround them, so everyone's miserable no matter when you happen to land." He clasped his hands in front of him. "If I'm going to be treated intolerably by the people around me, I'd rather it be here in London."

"Oh I don't know," John said. "New York isn't really all that bad. It certainly has its charms…"

"So does Baghdad."

The lift stopped and the doors slid open and John and Sherlock stepped out into the main lobby of the financial building.

"I really felt _at home _there," John continued. "It was uncanny. I mean, I know I was young but—"

John's words drifted away as Sherlock fixated on the first part of his sentence: "_I really felt at home there__…" _The thought of John moving away—an entire ocean away—paralyzed him for the briefest of seconds. He was having a hard enough time still adjusting to John living across town from him, let alone on the other side of the world. Panic began to well in the space beneath Sherlock's sternum. He took a deep breath, hoping it would calm him down, but it didn't.

"It's just that…well, it's different. Musical…the horns, the chatter, Broadway…"

"You can't," he said.

John's eyebrows shot up. "What?"

Sherlock struggled to maintain his composure. He cleared his throat. "Broadway is-is nothing like the West End."

John shrugged. "New York has Greenwich Village?"

"And London has Soho…" Sherlock retorted. "And Bloomsbury, and Carnaby Street, and Brick Lane, and Notting Hill, and Kings Road, and—"

John sighed and lifted his hand to hail a cab, pulling his arm in when he realized the one that passed them was occupied. "I'm not moving to New York if that's what you're worried about."

"Worried?" Sherlock scoffed—feeling his blood pressure lowering as he did. "Who said anything about being worried?"

John smirked at his friend. "Right."

Sherlock took a breath and unkinked his neck, which was suddenly sore and tight. "We were talking about Christmas carols, I believe."

"Yeah, we were," John said, watching two occupied cabs pass them by. "Yeah, why the sudden interest anyway?"

"You said it yourself: twenty two sleeps."

"But I never thought you were the Christmas type," John said, stepping out from the curb and waving at a second taxi.

"I'm not, generally," Sherlock said, coming up with a lie on the spot. "It's just that…my mother is having a Christmas Day _thing _and if I don't supply something in its stead, Mycroft will play a constant stream of Trans-Siberian Orchestra, punctuated every hour or so by Emerson, Lake, & Palmer's 'I Believe in Father Christmas.' There's really only so much of that I can take."

_Not a whole lie, but not the whole truth either. Mummy is having Christmas. Mycroft almost certainly will stand as arbiter of good taste when it comes to the musical selections__…_

Sherlock hoped the lie would take, but pressed on a little further just to make sure. "I-I seem to be in quite the deficit position as far as Christmas carols are concerned ever since you and your massive back catalogue of pirated music moved out, so I'm compiling a master list in the hopes she'll relent and let me play DJ instead of my brother and his iPod."

"Right," John nodded. "Well, I can email you a list if you'd like."

"That would be…good," he replied, furthering the lie even more. "You're invited, by the way."

"Invited?"

_Why did you do that? _he thought to himself as he smiled. "Mm. To my parents' on Christmas Day. You and Mary."

John smiled. "Oh, how nice of your mum. Unexpected," he said, until a shadow crossed his face. "Oh, but then that means—will your brother play Boney M?"

Sherlock nodded vigorously. "That is pretty much a guarantee."

"Right," John said. "Then I will be sure to get on that email…"

Sherlock made a bolded-and-underlined note to call his mother and convince her to invite John and Mary to Christmas.

A cab pulled up curbside and John strode over to John leaned over to give the address to the driver, and just as he was about to swing himself into he backseat, he paused. "What's yours?"

"Mine?" Sherlock puzzled.

"Your favourite Christmas carol?"

He stopped, his hand on the doorframe. _Favourite Christmas carol? _Zoned out entirely, he dropped himself into the backseat beside John, racing through his mind to try and come up with just one song to satisfy John's curiosity. _Do you even have one? _

"I…well…" Sherlock blanked, completely. He thumbed through the files of standards and classics and hymns in his mind, reading each song title as if it were written in Urdu. He moved past the blankness and right on into the shame he suddenly felt for not knowing how to answer such a simple question. _How out of touch are you, really?_

"Sherlock?"

The detective blinked. "Ah…I've always had…a bit of a soft spot for that one…about a hit-and-run involving a reindeer and the narrator's grandmother."

John paused for a moment before bursting out laughing. "Hilarious!"

Sherlock stared out the window the entire way home, watching the soggy streets of London pass him by, suddenly wondering if any of this was a good idea.

"I just don't know what songs I should put together for Christmas now," John said, anxiously rubbing his hands over his thighs. "I love the modern songs, I really do. But I know it's the traditional ones that get most people riled up. Not the hymns, necessarily. I'm talking about Bing Crosby and Mel Tormé and Nat King Cole…"

Sherlock concentrated on what John was saying. "How do you make a good Christmas playlist?"

John let out a puff of air. "Don't know, really. Never done it," he paused, then shook his head with a laugh. "No, that's a lie—the first year we got a CD player I was put in charge of manning the machine. But I think we only had two Christmas CDs so I wasn't much of a DJ." He smiled. "It was actually more of a tradition in our home to gather around the piano. Harry was—is, I imagine, still—a prodigious talent. You could put a sheet of music in front of her that she'd never seen before and she'd be able to play it without a hitch. And everyone would sing along." He chuckled. "A family that plays together stays together. Except after everyone moves away or dies and you stop talking to your sister entirely…"

Sherlock watched John but held off on the deductions. "Music's important then?"

"Paramount," John replied. "Ah, but even if the old traditions are gone, there's time to make new ones. I've got a daughter on the way, after all."

The detective nodded. "That you do."

"Yeah," John sighed. "I should really let Mary out of the dog house…"

Sherlock nodded. "Aside from a dodgy past as a hired assassin, I think she's probably the best thing to happen to you since I came along."

John laughed. "Too true," he said. "And she definitely won't mind if our child's first exposure to Christmas music is via the dulcet tones of Shane MacGowan and Kristi MacColl…"

Sherlock knit his eyebrows together, the reference entirely lost on him. But he didn't bother asking for clarification—the admission that he didn't know something John did would recommend his pop cultural shortfalls too highly.

Plus, he just wanted to enjoy the as of late rare event that was "John Laughing" for a little while longer, uninterrupted.


	6. I Wish I Had a River So Long

****A/N:** _This one's a bit longer than the others...but it's worth it to cram in as much Sherlolly fluff as possible! Enjoy!_******

* * *

><p><span>Mid-December<span>

Staring down a microscope in the Bart's hospital pathology lab, Sherlock was only aware of two things in the room around him, and neither of them were contained within the slide on the stage beneath the lens.

Firstly, it was cold—too cold. Much colder than it usually was. He knew this not only from the feel of the chilled air against his skin but also from the fact that Molly was working in her coat, with gloves on her hands, her knit scarf wrapped three times around her neck. Admittedly, Molly was always cold. But she never worked so bundled up, not in the lab. And this time it wasn't just her. He could feel it; it was refrigerator cold. He was five minutes away from relenting and slipping into his Belstaff himself.

Secondly, Molly had changed her perfume. As Sherlock had come to learn about women in general—and Molly in particular—that could mean anything or signify nothing at all. He wasn't looking for a deduction, but his mind went there of its own accord every time she walked past, immersed in her work and seemingly oblivious to his presence. His two most plausible working theories were that that she either had a date after work—unlikely, as she was wearing a rather unfortunate sweater with far too much cat hair on it and she hadn't brought a change of clothes with her when she arrived to start her shift, he knew, since they'd come up together on the elevator straight from the street level entrance, and she'd only been carrying her "work shoes bag", not her "I've-got-a-date-after-work" bag—or that she'd been ogling the new A&E nurse's Avon order in the on-call room two floors down on her lunch break.

_Probably the second one_, Sherlock thought, careening past the knot in his stomach that tied up his realization that perhaps he was guessing incorrectly. It was possible, even for him, to make a mistake or two. Maybe the boy—_man? Did Molly date men? No__—__boys, the lot of them__…__little boys with little brains__…_—she was dating was a cat person too. Maybe he wouldn't mind that she was desperately trying to single-handedly bring mohair jumpers back into style. Maybe he was the one who bought her the perfume…

Sherlock shook his head, frowning as he pushed his eyes back to the microscope and tried to focus, blinking against the harsh, bright lights shooting up through the eyepiece. He saw his own eyelashes, not the cells on the slide. He blinked again. _It__'__s not even a nice perfume_, he thought. It overpowered her, full of masculine notes—balsam and myrrh—that didn't suit her at all. _It__'__s all wrong. Molly isn__'__t musk and spice; she__'__s floral._ For a moment, he recalled the last time he'd been in Molly's flat—years ago now, during his long absence. He couldn't bring up any memories of the products in the bathroom, but the scent was there, in his nostrils even now. Perhaps it wasn't even perfume at all but lotion, or a hair product of some sort. Roses and vanilla…

The memory faded as the current blend sitting heavy on her collarbone wafted over him. He frowned, seeing his own eyelashes once again within the eyepiece. He knew Molly was standing behind him; she reached for a beaker on the middle shelf and then walked back to her bench, the perfume swirling in her wake.

"What are you working on anyway?" she asked him.

Sherlock looked up over the microscope and cleared his throat. "Decay rates of intestinal epithelial tissue in the presence of a variety of aqueous substances."

"Oh," she said. "For a specific case or—?"

"My own research."

"Right."

He leaned back and switched off the microscope; he wasn't getting any work done anyway. With a quick cough to clear his throat, he focused his attention. "Are you looking forward to Christmas?" he asked, his voice shifting almost imperceptibly higher.

Molly stared at him with a look he might have charitably called 'slack-jawed' for a long moment before she replied. "Is this small talk?"

He held his hands open. "What is it with everyone disbelieving that I am capable of engaging in the finer points of social nicety?" he muttered aloud to himself. "Yes, small talk, whatever you want to call it. I'm inquiring after your life. If you'd rather I didn't—"

"No," Molly shook her head, amusement dancing in her eyes. "No no no, it's fine. Just…unlike you."

"It's Christmas," he muttered. "Happy Holidays, ho ho ho, and all that."

Molly chuckled. "I _am_ looking forward to Christmas. It's always hard this time of year, what with the anniversary of my dad's passing…"

_Anniversary. _Sherlock hadn't realized that Molly's father had died so close to the holiday season, but as he scoured his memory banks for something to say, he did happen upon the recollection of a Christmas luncheon at the hospital in the very early years of his association with St. Bart's, a luncheon that he'd been invited to—probably by accident, since he'd never been invited to another—and during which Molly had seemed unusually despondent.

He was careful not to slam the door shut on that particular memory…

"Dad always loved this time of year," Molly continued. "He was a big believer in the ritual of the tree, as he called it—"

"A Christmas tree!" Sherlock cried, "I knew I forgot something…"

"What?"

Sherlock frowned. "I was supposed to get a tree…I suppose it's too late now."

Molly shook her head. "There's a tree lot not too far from my flat. They still had a lot of good trees this morning."

Sherlock was already half way into his coat when Molly realized she was speaking to an empty stool.

"You coming?" he asked.

"Me?"

"You drove today. I need a car to bring the tree home."

Molly scoffed. "Right," she said. "I guess work will just wait for me to finish running your errands then?"

Sherlock slid his arms through the sleeves. "It will take another six hours for the samples you're working on to finish processing. You've read through this week's _Lancet _four times already because you have nothing else to do. Your shift finishes in forty-five minutes and we both know you've put in nearly fifteen hours of overtime that you haven't declared," he tugged on the end of his scarf. "I'd appreciate the help…unless, of course, you have plans this evening…"

"I did have a bit of a date."

Sherlock felt that twinge in the pit of his stomach. "A date?" he asked. "Sounds…vastly more important."

She shook her head. "I wouldn't exactly call a pint of ice cream, a bottle of merlot, and my Netflix queue 'important.' It will keep one more night, I promise you." She took her coat off the hanger and put her lab coat in its place.

As a wave of relief washed over him, Sherlock realized he was being left behind; Molly was half way down the corridor to the elevators. He cinched his scarf around his neck once more and, without a second thought, barrelled out of the lab after her.

* * *

><p>"So why do you need a Christmas tree so badly?"<p>

Sherlock didn't hear her. Their haul—a lovely six and a half foot Scotch pine—had been pushed and prodded to fit inside Molly's car, with the backseats tipped down and the base of the tree sticking a foot outside the boot. Sherlock was securing the lid with a length of bungee cord to prevent it from opening on the way home. He was trying to pay attention to Molly and the task at hand, but his mind kept wandering back to the way she'd walked through the trees in the lot, running reverent hands over tree boughs in search of The Perfect One. He'd only ever seen her this enthralled when she was in the middle of an autopsy, and even then, he wondered which one elicited the greater joy.

"Sherlock?"

"Hm? Oh…well, doesn't everyone need a tree?"

She chuckled. "Dumb question."

He stood up and rubbed his hands together to warm them up. "That will hold it."

"Do you want to come in and warm up?" she asked, motioning to her front door across the street. "I need to feed Toby anyway and—"

Sherlock nodded. "Of course."

"Right." She locked the car door. Together they walked across the empty street, into the front foyer, and began up the stairs to her second floor sublet. Sherlock was awash with nostalgia at the very sight of her entry hall; the two weeks he'd spent with her six months into his mission, and the week he'd holed up there two months before it all ended, and the spare days and weekends along the way when he'd been called back to London by necessity, had all been spent here. He'd tiptoe up these steps and ghost into her flat using the key she'd given him, and for however long he stayed—no matter what he'd seen or where he'd come from—he felt human again. Molly would be there to fix him tea or turn down the bedclothes or do nothing at all except be there, if that's what he needed, and he never had to say a word to get her to understand that. Molly's flat, with its coved ceilings and rattling radiator and a cat that shed more fur than it wore, was one of only three places in his entire life that he could honestly say made him feel like he was home.

And Molly, by extension, felt the same.

He never anticipated that.

_No wonder the perfume change set you off, _he scolded himself.

As they reached the landing, Molly fumbled for her keys. "You'll just have to pardon the mess. I wasn't expecting company…" she said as she slid the tumbler on the lock and turned the doorknob.

Even in the dim light from the street outside, Sherlock could see that, rather than being the disaster she'd led him to expect, her small apartment was instead a picture postcard of Christmas decor. This was confirmed when she switched on the lights and brought the room to life.

"I'll be just a minute," she said as she tossed her keys to the table beside the door and met Toby on the threshold to her small kitchen. Sherlock, for his part, simply took in his surroundings.

Everything was cast in traditional Christmas colours, and every available horizontal surface was adorned with something festive—centrepieces made of pinecones, pillar candles, embroidered table runners. She had a large collection of snowglobes, displayed along the bookshelves and tucked into nooks wherever they would fit. Decorative pillows and throws rested against the sofa cushions. Fragrant pine boughs dropped lazily over the edge of the mantle of her bricked-up fireplace, hung with delicate glass balls and sprigs of glittery faux cranberries. Each doorway was festooned with festive garlands, holly, and crimson bows. A mistletoe ball hung within the doorway to the kitchen. The whole room smelled of cinnamon.

But the Christmas tree was what stood out. Tall and slim, it still took up most of the corner of the room, and from top to bottom, it shimmered even though its lights weren't on. Large sparkling Christmas balls and a length of red ribbon twisted and circled the entire tree, from the lowest, fullest branches to the very tip-top of the golden star perched on the highest bough. There were no gaps, no empty spots needing to be filled—it seemed perfectly uniform.

Sherlock took two steps closer and began to see details emerging that distance hadn't afforded him the ability to discern: he saw the same cranberry picks as he'd seen on the mantle, nestled alongside the quaint, homemade ornaments that spoke of classroom art projects from Molly's school years. Beaded candy canes and pipe cleaner Christmas wreaths, popsicle stick stars and metallic ribbon bows, populated the space in-between the matched ornaments. It was a tree with a sense of history as well as uniform beauty.

He couldn't resist the urge to flick the switch and light the tree, and when he did, the room glowed. He had no idea Molly had such decorative talent.

"Do you like it?"

He turned to face Molly, standing in the doorway to the kitchen.

"It's very lovely," he said.

"The tree is my favourite," she said, joining him in its light. "It's the same one I grew up with. Artificial, of course. I mean, _of course _it is…it couldn't be alive all these years…" she snorted softly at her own half-joke before sighing. "Same ornaments, too. I could probably tell you the story behind each and every one." She sighed. "I love this tree."

Her voice was soft and deferential; he turned to her, regarding her with gentle awe. "Do you always decorate your home so extravagantly?"

Molly laughed. "Extravagant? I held back this year! Usually this place looks better than Buckingham Palace, if I may be so boastful." Her laugh trailed off and she shrugged. "I normally host a Christmas party for a few of my university friends but this year one's off in Tuscany on her honeymoon and another is visiting her boyfriend's relatives in Hawaii, of all places. Thought it would be pointless to go to all the trouble." She turned to Sherlock. "You're the first—and probably only—person to see it all decorated anyway."

Sherlock focused intently on the glass angel ornament dangling from a slightly-below eye level branch in front of him. He wanted to say something…but what? "How do you…know…how to decorate?"

She shrugged. "Decorating the house for Christmas was always my favourite part of the season. We'd make such a big deal out of it. My mum had this big trunk in the cellar and she kept all the Christmas stuff in there. I can still remember the smell inside—musty but warm, you know? Like hay in an old barn." Molly smiled. "It would take all day, this little family tradition. Dad was always in charge of the ritual of it all, but Mum made it work. He'd make us breakfast at the very edge of dawn, and we'd eat and drink tea and then march down to the cellar and start hauling up boxes by mid morning. Set up the tree…put on the ornaments…hang every bough and every bow in _exactly_ the right places. By nightfall, the house was glowing and we'd make cocoa and light a fire and watch a Christmas film or two…" she turned back to the tree and sniffled. "After Mum passed, and it was just Dad and me. I tried to remember where everything went, where Mum had put them. Usually I did a pretty good job. Dad always seemed to think so, anyway. Then when Dad died...well, it was all on me then."

Molly, in her deep and abiding desire to please everyone at the expense of herself, had never opened up to him, and likely hadn't opened up to anyone in a while, on such a level. From the way her shoulders tensed as she spoke and then seemed to release as she finished, the rhythmic fidget in her right hand where she flicked her thumbnail against her index finger, the incline of her head and lack of eye contact, and the systematic way she'd seemed to fold in on herself—becoming smaller than her already diminutive stature allowed for in the process—all spoke to the defensiveness she suddenly felt about the topic.

When she spoke again to ask him a question—"Did you ever hear that one song about the river? By Joni Mitchell?"—her voice had shrunk too, and was ringed with doubt and the looming threat of tears.

"Molly, you aren't looking forward to Christmas at all."

As if she could stiffen any more, her shoulders squared and she—predictably—changed the subject. "Did your parents decorate for the holidays?"

Sherlock paused for a long moment, wondering what to do. In the end, he followed her lead—she obviously didn't want to talk about it. With a slight wave of his hand around the room, he muttered. "My mother subscribes more to the Tacky Retro Department Store School of Decorating than Classic Victorian."

"Ah," Molly nodded with a shrug, attacking a stray teardrop with the flick of her fingertip beneath her eye. "But you know what? That's nice too. There's no better time of the year to get corny than Christmas." She smiled at him, adding. "What's important is that those are _your _traditions."

Sherlock stood up a little straighter. He'd never thought about it like that before. "I suppose that's true."

"Of course it is!" she grinned. "I'm sure you have lots of lovely Christmas memories surrounded by those—what did you call them?—tacky retro department store decorations!"

Sherlock allowed himself a small smile. "I do have a box of particularly awful multi-colored foil decorations that my mother gave to me on the first Christmas I lived away from home. I'm fairly certain they lived through at least one, probably both, of Churchill's tenures as Prime Minister to survive fairly intact to this day."

Molly giggled. "How charming!"

"In fact, that's probably all I have by way of Christmas decorations," he thought out loud. "Certainly not enough to ready my flat for a Christmas party—"

"_You__'__re_ having a Christmas party?"

"Christmas Eve," he said. "Your invitation is in the mail. You should receive it tomorrow."

"I'm invited?"

"Of course you are." He looked at her. "Why are you surprised?"

What shaky resolve she'd built up after her last brush with tears seemed ready to crumble. Her lower lip trembled and he saw her eyes welling once more. "I still don't really think of myself as…or our friendship…I don't know…" she dismissed herself as the tears that had threatened to fall finally did begin their course down her cheeks. She frowned. "Don't be so stupid, Molly..." she chided herself.

Sherlock watched with pain in his heart as she beat herself up; it was the least he could do to hand her the box of tissues on the small table beside him.

"Ta," she whispered, swiping two tissues in quick succession before bringing them to her cheeks.

Sherlock shifted from one foot to the other. "You're wrong, you know. Our friendship is...very dear to me," he said, opting to help lighten the mood that had settled over them. "And if that were a lie, I wouldn't be able to tell you that you should really rethink your perfume choice. It is not at all suited to your unique scent profile."

For a moment, Molly stood stunned before him before cracking up with laughter. "It _is_ terrible, isn't it?" she wrinkled her nose, pressing the used tissue in her hand against its tip as she removed her scarf from around her neck and shut her eyes with embarrassment. "It's just that one of the new clerks down in A&E just started repping for one of those direct selling companies selling perfume. Went down to see her on my lunch break. I was just being a good sport about it." She sniffed the scarf and recoiled with another laugh. "Ugh. Really terrible. I have to switch scarves…"

_Not Avon, and not a nurse, but works in A&E__…__one out of three isn__'__t terrible when the other two aren__'__t that far off, _Sherlock congratulated himself on his earlier deduction as Molly left the room, hurrying down the hall. When she returned, she had changed her scarf; she'd also reapplied the familiar scent Sherlock had been missing all day. He gratefully took in a lungful of air, letting it settle deep in the familiar pockets where he stored his memories of her.

"Look, I was thinking…" Molly said, pausing to chew on her lip. "I mean, I don't want to sound presumptuous…but if you don't have decorations…and you are having a party…I mean, no one is ever going to _see _these ones this year…"

Sherlock looked around him once again, piecing together the gist of what Molly was failing to explain to him in proper English sentences. He couldn't imagine his flat done up in such festive splendour… "But I wouldn't know how—"

"I know. But I'd help you, of course," she said, still blushing.

Sherlock regarded Molly with an overabundance of affection, this woman who had come into his life and turned it so completely upside down. He nodded. "Thank you, Molly."

She nodded back, sniffling again and heaving a hitched and shuddering post-cry breath into her lungs. "Right," she said, starting to gather her own decorations off the table beside her. "What are we waiting for?"


	7. And the Bells Were Ringing Out

December 24

In the upstairs parlour of 221B Baker Street, with a roaring fire burning in the hearth, awash in the aroma of perfectly seasoned turkey, Sherlock Holmes tapped his foot nervously against the floor boards as he checked his watch for the third time in thirty seconds. It was 5:57 pm.

_You said 6pm. That__'__s three minutes until everyone is officially late. Occupy yourself until then._

He cast his eyes about the room, running through the list in his head.

_Baking_, he thought, looking over to the coffee table, where two three-tiered serving trays he'd borrowed from Mrs. Hudson sat piled high with tarts and cookies and Christmas oranges. He'd spent hours on the pastries—first baking them and then using a fine cheese grater to scrape off the burned bottoms of the first batches. He wished he'd listened to Mrs. Hudson a little bit closer when she'd gone over the oven temperature part. Still, he nodded. _Check._

_Fire, _he turned to the hearth before scolding himself. _You can feel the heat of it on your legs. Don__'__t be daft. Check. _

_Food. _He'd just basted the turkey; it was within ten minutes of being done. Sage and onion stuffing was cooking on the stovetop—safer that way, less risky than cooking it inside the bird, despite what Mrs. Hudson may have told him—next to the potatoes. He'd make the gravy from turkey drippings when that was done. In the slow cooker—also borrowed from Mrs. Hudson—a mix of vegetables stewed on low. Two loaves of French bread from a nearby _patisserie_ were laid out in the basket on the counter; the butter dish sat next to the cranberry sauce and the prawn cocktail ring, already on the table. _Check_.

He took a deep breath and checked his watch. 5:58.

_Cleanliness? _He cast his eyes about the room. His and Molly's decorations had withstood the intervening days admirably well in spite of the excitement of his professional life. Her fine decor sat next to a random assortment of tacky vintage ones Sherlock had been talking about—a few gold foil garlands, two collapsible red and green bells, and a handful of starburst pom-pom type hangers—which she'd hung up around the parlour with exactly the same care she'd hung her own things. The random clutter besides had been arranged into something far closer to neatness; what couldn't be remedied had been packed away in the empty upstairs bedroom. He'd put away his case files. He'd removed his computer. He'd even vacuumed the rug. _Check._

_Table. _He counted the place settings. Then he counted them again. Gleaming china and silverware—also borrowed from Mrs. Hudson—gleamed in the place of the beakers and test tubes that once cluttered the dining table, lining a tablecloth the colour of Devonshire cream. A table runner—something he'd never known existed before a week earlier—spanned the length of the table, the same colour as the ornaments on the tree in the corner. _Check_.

_Tree! _He turned towards the corner and beheld the glittering branches of the tree Molly had helped him select and decorate a dozen days earlier, with ornaments from the box his mother had given him. Molly had been right—it was a happy little tree. Beautiful on its own, with the simple ornaments from Sherlock's school days and the vintage ones he remembered from his tree growing up it took on a hue of nostalgia that Sherlock still hadn't quite gotten over. Next to Molly's rather elegant decor—both in the room around him and on her own tree back home—Sherlock's stood out as different but not unwelcome. He actually rather liked it. _Check._

_Presents. _Five boxes wrapped under the the boughs, exactly where he'd left them after obsessively arranging them that afternoon. _Check, check, check, check, check._

_Fire? Still burning. Stop checking._

He'd spent a solid week reading about how to throw a successful Christmas party. He was ninety-nine percent of the way there.

A knock at the door downstairs caused his stomach to bottom out. He checked his watch. _5:59 and fifteen seconds__…_

Sherlock raked a hand through his hair, letting out a deep breath as he tugged on the sleeves of his suit jacket and counted the place settings on the table for the third time. Mrs. Hudson—who'd been forbidden from coming up at any point in the last three days—bustled about downstairs on her way to the door. Sherlock heard her voice echoing up the stairwell, which reminded him that he hadn't put on the Christmas music yet, and for a lone second he let his panic overtake him. In a flurry of movement, he turned on the speakers and cued up his playlist, and as the first footfalls on the stairwell began their approach, the soundtrack to the party started.

Molly was the first to enter, with Lestrade—slack-jawed—moving in behind her. On the landing, Mrs. Hudson gasped. They were each laden down with gifts—bags and boxes and parcels tucked under their arms and gripped in their hands.

"Sherlock!" Mrs. Hudson cried, nearly dropping the stack of three boxes in her arms.

"Welcome," he said.

Molly smiled, setting her bags down. "It looks wonderful," she winked at him.

"It _smells _wonderful!" Lestrade said. "Did you cook?"

"As a matter of fact, I did," he said. "You can place your parcels under the tree. May I take your coats?"

Molly and Lestrade handed their outerwear to him and he walked down the hall to his room, placing the coats on the bed.

Lestrade hadn't moved past the cooking part. He was peering into the kitchen as Sherlock made his way back into the parlour. "Like—a turkey? And everything?"

Sherlock walked back into the parlour as the door downstairs opened. He took another breath. "Drinks, anyone?"

Voices in the stairwell came up from the downstairs landing. "Hello? We let ourselves in—suppose you didn't hear the…doorbell…"

John and Mary stood in the doorway, shock registered on their faces.

Sherlock noticed with some small measure of satisfaction that they were holding hands. He hid his grin as he glanced at his watch. "You're late," he said.

John's eyes traversed the circumference of the room. "You decorated."

"Someone had to," he replied, glancing at Molly. "Though I had help."

The doctor's eyes landed on the trays of baked goods. "Are these edible?"

Sherlock sighed. "Of course they are," he replied. "They are Mrs. Hudson's recipes, so if they taste like rubbish—"

"My recipes?" Mrs. Hudson gaped. "But I don't—" She covered her smiling lips with her hand. "Oh Sherlock…"

Mary stepped into the room, a smile on her face. "The place looks lovely, Sherlock," she said as she planted a kiss on his cheek.

"Did you know anything about this?" John asked Mrs. Hudson.

She raised her hand. "God's honest truth, I knew nothing."

Sherlock watched John's reaction intently. "Have I done it wrong?" he asked.

John, still at a loss, let a breath out and broke into a smile. "Quite the opposite," he said. "It's…marvellous."

He reached out a hand to shake Sherlock's, setting off a round of hugs and handshakes and "Happy Christmases" that nearly obscured the peal of the oven timer.

"Is that—?" Lestrade asked.

Molly chuckled. "What is it with you and food? You hungry or something?"

"I'm starved!" Mary smiled. "They always said you'd eat for two but I never thought that meant two _armies_!"

"I hope you bought a large bird, Sherlock," John said.

"And a small ham," Sherlock replied with a smirk at Lestrade.

"No," Lestrade laughed. "You bloody didn't!"

John shook his head. "What's funny?"

Sherlock's smile was warm as he looked between his friends—all of them, the closest people in the world to him, gathered in his living room—and realized he was no longer nervous, and hadn't had the compulsion to check his watch in—_Damn it, you looked at your watch again! _he scolded himself. Still, he felt contented as he shook his head at John.

"Inside joke," he told him, clasping his hands together in front of him. "Now—who wants to carve the turkey?"

* * *

><p>Sherlock mashed the potatoes; John and Lestrade fought over how to properly carve; Mary dished out stuffing and vegetables into serving bowls on the table; Molly sliced the baguettes; and Mrs. Hudson poured the wine.<p>

It was a success by anyone's standards.

At the end, with dishes empty and bellies full, the six of them leaned back in their chairs, laughter dying on their lips as they contemplated how they might move. But move they did, after another half an hour had passed, to start an assembly line at the sink to wash the dishes, dry them, and return them to their rightful spots in the cupboards. Someone started singing "Jingle Bells"; soon they were carolling as they cleaned, and an hour passed though it felt like only a quarter of that.

When the work was done, they collapsed in the parlour. Conversations continued. More wine was poured. John stoked the fire. Molly regaled Mary with the story about her hand in the decorations; Mary told Molly about how badly her feet had swelled after an afternoon's excursion on Marylebone High Street.

It was Mrs. Hudson who finally suggested they dive into the gifts now piled high under the tree and spilling out into the room itself.

"Mine first," Sherlock said, with enough persuasive adamance that no one argued. He got up and walked to the tree, then dug out his gifts, which he set in an ordered pile next to his chair. "Before I give these out, though, I just wanted to say—"

"Oh, a repeat of your wedding speech!" Lestrade joked.

"Get on with it," Mary prodded with a laugh.

Sherlock grinned but shook his head. "I suppose you've all been wondering why it is that I've been acting so strangely these last few weeks."

"You always act a bit strangely, Sherlock," Mrs. Hudson grinned. "You do realize you're a bit of an odd duck, don't you?"

Another impatient grin. "Yes, well…I-I don't think it's any secret that I'm not good at this sort of thing. But I spent my last three Christmases alone, respectively, in a Belgradian narcotics warehouse, a Fort Lauderdale motel, and the bad books of almost everyone in this room as a result of the previous two…" he paused. "I thought it was as good a time as any to rectify that."

He looked around at the rapt, attentive faces of the people he'd gathered in his small central London flat. He cleared his throat and continued. "I used to think Christmas was just another excuse for relatives who never really liked one another to spend extended period of time together in forced isolation. In talking with each of you over the last few weeks, however, I learned that Christmas is about something more. It's about traditions. Shared with family. And when I realized that each of us, for whatever reason—choice, circumstance, or, in my case...hopeful accidental adoption—each of us is often without family in the strictest traditional sense."

He waited until the laughter at his joke—which he never realized he'd made—to stop before continuing: "Except…we're not."

Sherlock handed out the gifts to each person, their names written on gift tags tied to the delicate bows adorning each impeccably wrapped box. "We can't always choose the family we're born into, but we _can_ choose the family we stick with," he began again. "And you are—to me, anyway—family. I don't always say it and I know I don't always show it, but I hope you all know how important you are. To me." He paused, briefly, before nodding. "Thank you."

He sat down, and the five faces peering up at him barely moved, until Mary hitched a sob and Mrs. Hudson swiped at a tear starting down her face.

"You did this for us?" she asked.

Sherlock nodded. "Those are your cookies," he said to her, "And the meal was inspired by _Greg_," he said, getting the Inspector's name right for the first time ever. Sherlock motioned to the tree. "Molly did the tree and the decor. John did the music. And Mary, you inspired the gifts…" he looked at her, clutching the silver package in her hand, tied with a purple bow. He frowned. "Sort of. Mary, when we went shopping together, I'd already purchased everything, but you helped me realize I had been on the right track and—"

"Shut up, Sherlock," John grinned. "You big bloody idiot. Just shut up."

Sherlock nodded, pinching his lips shut before flicking his eyebrows up expectantly. Molly was the first to tear into the gift, setting off a flurry of paper and bows that suddenly covered every available inch of floor space around them.

For Mrs. Hudson, he'd bought a large leather book with blank pages and a set of three fountain pens, "…for you to start writing down your recipes. You shouldn't deprive future generations of the bounty of your kitchen." Tucked inside were two theatre vouchers. She kissed him on the cheek and promised to take him with her—an unintended but welcome gesture.

For Lestrade, he'd found a collection of rare books about the history of the Metropolitan Police and a few old maps, one of which dated back to the Jack the Ripper murders. _"__The best lawmen know where they__'__ve come from so they know where they__'__re going,__"_ Sherlock had written in a card tucked in the box. _"__Not that you need help in this area__…"_

For John, an antique medical dictionary. "It's clear to me now that I've spent far too much time in book stores," Sherlock said by way of apology for the repetition in his gifts, but no one seemed to mind. He'd also carefully wrapped up an mid-19th century stethoscope he'd found at an antique stall in the market and bought as an afterthought—though he didn't tell John that part.

For Mary, the delicate wrapping—the same as the kind she'd received at the German orphanage—revealed a box containing a beautiful necklace, with a heart-shaped pendant and spaces for three gemstones. Only two had been filled—one with John's birthstone, one with Mary's. The third was empty. "When the baby is born—" Sherlock began, before having his sentence cut off by Mary's arms once again flung around his neck. She cried on his shoulder and professed her thanks, and Sherlock patted her back as soothingly as he could until she stood up and walked back to John, to show him the necklace.

For Molly—the hardest one to buy for, by far—Sherlock had found a beautiful and old copy of _Pride & Prejudice _for a very reasonable price from a bookseller whose store Sherlock had saved a number of months earlier. This he wrapped next to a very old copy of Gray's Anatomy, and both were surrounded in the box by a long scarf, cast in a shade of deep evergreen, "…because I couldn't decide if Jane Austen trumped Dr. Henry Gray or your love of ridiculously long scarves, so I got them all…"

By the end, teary-eyes outnumbered dry and Sherlock, having tried explaining his various gift choices in sundry ways, cleared his throat to break the tension. "I have receipts for everything if you should—"

"Sherlock…" John shook his head. "Thank you."

"Thank you, Sherlock," Lestrade said.

Mrs. Hudson chorused. "Thank you very much."

"Thank you," Mary said.

"Thanks, Sherlock," Molly sniffled, resting a hand on his knee.

He straightened, clearing his throat and clearly overwhelmed. "There a-are more gifts…"

And at that, everyone else dug in. More paper was scattered around the room. Everyone tucked their haul beneath their chairs or next to their feet. And in the end, smiles abounded.

Outside the window they heard the peal of a church bell. Midnight.

"Is it that late already?" Molly asked. "I had no idea!"

"Happy Christmas!" Mary cheered, setting off another round of hugs that circled the room. Someone produced yet another bottle of wine; the song on the speakers—still playing the ridiculously long playlist that John had created for Sherlock weeks earlier—switched over to one Sherlock recognized. John's eyes brightened.

"That's my song!" he pointed at the speaker as the most obscene Christmas song any of them knew launched into its first verse. Everyone joined in at the very tops of their lungs; even Mrs. Hudson could be heard, the loudest of all, saying words no one thought they'd ever hear her say in their lifetimes. Even Sherlock had been persuaded to sing, Molly on one side and Mary on the other, laughing along as he fumbled his way through the lyrics.

"_And the boys of the NYPD choir were singing __'__Galway Bay__'…__and the bells are ringing out for Christmas Day__…" _they chorused, laughing until their sides hurt.

The party then began to draw to a close. Mary leaned against John, which was his cue to take the load of received gifts down to their car before returning for his heavily pregnant wife. Sherlock knew he'd see them the next day, when they'd drive over to his parents' home together for Christmas Day. The goodbye was short and sweet.

"You did a good thing today, Sherlock," John said as he shook his friend's hand on the landing. "Merry Christmas."

Mrs. Hudson tiptoed out minutes later, still singing The Pogues' song as she went. "_You scum bag, you maggot..."_ she giggled. "Oh, you've given an old lady quite a thrill! Happy Christmas, Sherlock!"

Lestrade offered to walk Molly to her car, but she refused, politely, saying she wanted to stay and help Sherlock clean up. The Detective Inspector shrugged his coat on and made his goodbyes. "Had a lovely time," he said, wagging a finger at Sherlock. "But you've got a lot to live up to for next year, mate."

So it was that the Detective Inspector—after thanking Sherlock profusely and carting off two Tupperware containers filled with leftovers—marched down the stairs and out into the chilly December night, leaving Molly and Sherlock alone in the now far-too-empty flat.

* * *

><p><strong>**AN:** _I've got one more chapter-a bit of a epilogue-to tie this whole thing together. Until then..._******


	8. Where the Love Light Gleams

****A/N:** _This is it—the fluffy little epilogue to this fluffy little story. Thank you so much to everyone who stuck this one out. I took the liberty of making a song track featuring the songs mentioned (by name or referenced in chapter titles) for you to listen to. You can find it over at (8tracks).com(slash) lstam (slash) christmas-on-baker-street_

I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas!

* * *

><p>It had been a terribly long day.<p>

The embers in the fireplace crackled and glowed, giving off the last of their heat into the front parlour. Around the room, only the barest of party signs still remained—a tray half-emptied of its baked delicacies, a plate laden with crumbs, an empty wine glass, soft music drifting from the speakers. Errant reminders of the friends who'd been there and the frivolity of the evening.

Sherlock managed a smile. His tree glowed in the corner, and the sparkle of decorations—from the icy glimmer of Molly's mistletoe ball to the gleam of the foil bells hung on either end of the fireplace—added a warmth and ambience Sherlock had scarcely known in his time as the primary Baker Street tenant. Heavy in the air hung the smell of the fire and the lingering aroma of food long finished cooking, mingling with that ever-present scent of roses from which Sherlock could not escape even if he'd wanted to.

He finally felt himself relax. He crossed his legs at the ankle, resting them on the coffee table, and felt Molly shift beside him on the sofa.

She had lulled herself to near-sleep. Sherlock attributed this to the bottle of wine she and Mrs. Hudson had each consumed within the last two hours of the party; the alcohol's sedative effects were a far more plausible cause of Molly's fatigue than any efforts to clean the flat were. There had been so very little mess that the two of them had been finished the task she'd claimed he needed help with within fifteen minutes.

Still, she'd taken a seat on his sofa at the end and beckoned him to sit with her for a moment—_"Just admire for a moment, yeah?"_—and so he had, cataloguing the room in what he'd hoped would pass for admiration. In the time it had taken him to scan the room once, Molly had fallen asleep.

And he, for some reason, was quite content to let her stay that way.

She had her head propped up by her arm, her body angled across the sofa so that her legs could be tucked up beneath her. Every minute or so, she'd fidget, shifting positions to get more comfortable. It was during one of these fidgets that she moved her legs, quite abruptly, and caused her feet to brush his thigh. She then burrowed her toes beneath his leg.

_Cold_, he thought. _I should get her a blanket...s__he can't be all that comfortable, can she?_

He was reluctant to wake her—not much owing to sentiment, although he had to admit that he generally enjoyed the feeling of her toes wriggling between his thigh and the cushion—but knew how late it was, and could not in good conscience take up any more of Molly Hooper's time because of his own selfish desires to sit beside her while she slept.

He put a hand on her ankle and gently shook it. "Molly?"

She opened her eyes with a start. "Oh good lord! What time is it?"

"Nearly one in the morning."

Molly looked down at the spot on her wrist where her watch would have sat. "I don't usually fall asleep like that. Embarrassing. Was I drooling?"

Sherlock shook his head.

"I don't know if I should be driving..."

"I could take you home." _You probably shouldn't be driving either, Sherlock, _he scolded himself, remembering the scotch John had procured and poured all night long. _How many did you have?_

She sniffled and frowned. "How would you get home?"

"Cab."

"That's silly."

Sherlock cocked his head to the side. "You _could _just stay here. Save us both the trouble..." he winced slightly. "Not that it would be any trouble, really, if you—"

Molly seemed to regain some the faculties lost to that potent combination of exhaustion and merlot as she sat up and read his face with hazy eyes, staring at him just long enough for things to become somewhat uncomfortable. "Really?" she asked.

He nodded, rubbing the back of his neck. "You could sleep here...o-or I could, and you could...have the bedroom..."

Molly grinned. "Bashful Sherlock. Now that's a new one," she said as she leaned back against the sofa cushions again with a deep yawn. "But that would be nice. I don't mind sleeping on a sofa..."

Sherlock was about to stand up when Molly reached into the bag at her feet and produced a small wrapped parcel. She looked at it in her hands before handing it to him. "Might as well come out with it," she said. "I had one more gift for you but I didn't want anyone else to read into it or anything…"

Stunned, Sherlock accepted the box—very carefully wrapped in plaid paper and fastened with a deep green bow. "But—you already bought me a scarf. _Two _scarves in fact—"

"Yes," she said. "But you had me 'round to decorate your tree and I realized there was something else that was even better, so I ended up getting you another gift, and really, since you got me _three, _Sherlock…"

He looked down at the parcel, small enough to fit comfortably in the palm of his hand. The deftness of the folds and fasteners, the careful lack of excess creases in the paper, and the Hunter green bow tied with precision atop the box all led him to believe she had wrapped it specially, and with exceeding care, for him. Just like the last year she'd bought him a gift...

He tugged on one loose end and removed the bow, then carefully peeled back the paper, not wanting to rip it.

When he got to the small white box within, he looked up at Molly. "Really, you shouldn't have."

"You haven't even seen what's inside," she protested with another yawn. "You don't even know if you'll like it or hate it yet..."

Sherlock made a face but carefully lifted the top, revealing a miniature old-fashioned magnifying glass fastened to an ornament hook.

"It's for your tree," she slurred. "I know you don't usually use that type of magnifier…but—I don't know—it reminded me of you when I first saw it, and I knew you didn't have any ornaments on your tree that were _yours, _you know,or at least yours as an adult anyway, so I thought—"

Sherlock cradled the ornament in one hand and set the box down with the other before resting his hand once again on her ankle. "Thank you, Molly."

Her voice was small as it drifted from her lips. "You're welcome."

"_I_ didn't know how to bring it up," he continued, reaching over the edge of the sofa. "But I _also_ have something else for you."

This time Molly's shock was palpable as Sherlock retrieved one last parcel from a safe spot beneath his seat. He handed it to her.

"Sherlock Holmes…"

"Open it."

She eyed him suspiciously as she took the parcel, and with a grin began tearing into the packaging, pulling out from the wrapped box within a beautiful snow globe. Inside the globe sat a delicate Christmas tree, fully decorated in the centre of a snowy field. Molly smiled as she inverted it, sending the snow to the top of the globe before shaking it side to side and sending the flakes scattering over the tree.

"Oh, Sherlock—"

"I saw you had quite the collection and…"

"My dad used to buy me one. Every year. Every year…" she whispered, watching as the snowflakes fell. Her eyes filled with tears. "I haven't gotten one in nine…" She looked up at him then, not caring that her tears were falling freely. "It's perfect, Sherlock. This. Tonight. Everything. It's all perfect."

"I'm glad you think so."

She smiled, eyes still fixed on the globe, before setting it down on the table and spinning so she sat perpendicular to him and pulling him into an awkward embrace. Sherlock felt her smallness acutely as she leaned into his body, and as she swayed slightly in her inebriation, he wrapped his arms around her waist to help steady her, to keep her close, sitting in her rose-scented aura.

He might have been sitting in his home, surrounded by the memories of a homespun Christmas, with a woman whose flat had been the closest representation of home he knew during a fraught extended absence…but until Molly's arms wound around him, his notion of _home _was just a poor facsimile of the real thing, felt in the moment her cheek touched his..

He was, finally, home.

He cleared his throat. "Molly, I—"

"You surprise me sometimes, Sherlock," she said, pulling away from him then and moving in to kiss him on the cheek. She missed by a wide margin, and instead caught him in the very corner of his lips.

It lasted such a short time that he scarcely registered the sensation before she had pulled back, once again blushing from her décolletage to the apples of her cheeks.

"I dare say you surprise me, too..." he joked.

"Er...tradition," she said as she settled back down to the sofa and flicked her eyes up. Sherlock turned followed her gaze to the mistletoe ball she'd hung in the doorframe over his shoulder.

He smiled. "Doesn't the tradition state you need to be standing _beneath_ the mistletoe?"

Molly shrugged. "Maybe it's a new tradition. One we start tonight." She paused, as if the words had come from her lips not of her own accord. More spluttering unspoken apologies tumbled from her mouth as her skin flushed even brighter. "I mean, I do hope—and what I _don't_ mean is—well, er, I hope..."

Sleepiness and drink had turned the mousey pathologist into a siren, and Sherlock wasn't sure how to process that information. So he did what he did with everyone else whose baffling social cues left him puzzled more often than not: he followed her lead. She'd been forward enough to kiss him; he could do the same.

He closed the gap between them, running his fingers alongside her face to bury them in her hair as he leaned, tilted, and pressed his lips to hers.

When she pulled away, Sherlock realized he had no idea how long they'd been kissing; he only knew that Molly's skin was shaded in deep pink

"Tradition—" Sherlock started, his voice cracking over the syllables before he shook his head and cleared his throat. "_Tradition_...also says it must be on the lips. Fully."

"Does it now?"

He nodded.

"Hm," Molly was thoughtful for a moment. "I think I really like traditions..."

Sherlock considered for a brief second before allowing himself the space to think: _Me too..._

"Happy Christmas, Molly Hooper."

Molly smiled and nodded, tipping her head to the side as she regarded him suddenly with warmth, caring, and..._is that what love looks like? Why is my heart racing? My palms have never sweated like this before...and why is suddenly hard to breathe? _

Her smile spread—as did the warmth pooling in Sherlock's middle—and she parted her lips, beating her eyes away from his and back again in the span of a heartbeat. Sherlock wondered if this is what John felt when he first met Mary, and if it _was_,he no longer blamed his blogger and investigative partner for moving on from his "death" so quickly...because this was _intoxicating_.

Just before he thought he'd lose control of his higher processing functions, Molly's parted lips began forming words, and he heard her voice, muddling its way through the heady fog he seemed to be surrounded by.

"Here's hoping we get many more." She positively sparkled as she spoked. "Merry Christmas, Sherlock Holmes..."


End file.
